I'm copying the .mts files directly from my Canon HD camcorder's SD cards. It appears the camera only writes the date of video capture to the "Modified" portion of the file meta data, but doesn't update the creation date.

When I copy it over, OS X puts today's date/time as the last modified, and so the date of the video capture is lost - at least in the file meta data. I haven't checked to see if it's also encoded in the MTS file (perhaps someone here knows how to check this?)

What are my options for preserving the file information when copying? Using import with iMovie and others takes much, much longer than just copying them over, so I'd rather avoid using an import process, but at this rate it looks like that might be my best option.

1 Answer
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It looks like the best way to copy the camera data without importing it is to use the disk utility to image the SD card. Later on it can be mounted and normal camera import utilities will work and capture all the related metadata not stored in the MTS files.